


we were wolves once

by callunavulgari



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M, Self-cest, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Derek is nine, his daemon turns to him, her eyes wide and curious. She’s wearing the shape of a panther, supposedly because she likes the irony of it. Mostly, he figures she just likes having an excuse to sun herself languidly on the rocks by the creek.</p><p>“Derek,” she says, carefully. “I want to try something different.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/gifts).



> I honestly had no idea how to tag this. Is it incest? Is it self-cest? We will never know. Hopefully this isn't too terribly bleak for you. I initially started with Laura/Stiles/Allison + daemons + nogitsune!Allison, but uh, both ran out of time and got trampled by this idea. This horrible awful idea which was a combination of daemons, soulbonds, and Hale family weirdness. So hey, hope you like it!
> 
> For those curious, Olesia is a fox and Valerian is a wolverine.

“What should we call him?” a new mother asks, turning to her husband with a raised brow.   
  
The man considers for a moment, stroking a finger down the baby’s cheek. “Derek,” he decides. “I liked that name best.”  
  
“Derek,” she sighs happily. “Yes. And this little one?”  
  
They both peer down at the small creature cradled in the hollow of the child’s throat. It’s too small to be a puppy or a kitten, too large to be a mouse. Maybe a squirrel, the child’s mother thinks. Though it’s hard to tell, for the creature is as naked and pink as the boy himself.  
  
“Laura?” the man’s daemon suggests, nudging at the creature with the tip of a wet nose. It squeaks and flails its tiny arms in offense.  
  
“Mmm,” the woman agrees. “Laura and Derek. Perfect.”  
  
.  
  
“That was Derek Hale,” a boy whispers excitedly to another.  
  
There’s a pause, a breath like a sigh. The other boy turns to the first and cocks his head.   
  
“Stiles,” he whispers. “Did you see his daemon?”  
  
.  
  
When Derek is nine, his daemon turns to him, her eyes wide and curious. She’s wearing the shape of a panther, supposedly because she likes the irony of it. Mostly, he figures she just likes having an excuse to sun herself languidly on the rocks by the creek.  
  
“Derek,” she says, carefully. “I want to try something different.”  
  
.  
  
“Is it a werewolf thing?” Stiles asks, his nose wrinkled up in confusion. “Is that why you don’t have a daemon? Is your _wolf_ your daemon?”  
  
“No,” Derek tells him, teeth gritted against the pain. His arm _burns_.  
  
“But—”  
  
“Stiles,” Derek growls. “Leave it.”  
  
.  
  
“I didn’t mean to settle,” Laura gasps, her voice high and thin with anxiety. “I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to try—”  
  
She cuts herself off with an anguished noise, gingerly curling up at Derek’s side. He wants to lean over and stroke her spine, bury his nose in her fur and breathe until the panic subsides. He can’t though. He can’t, because Laura, she—  
  
“I’m sorry, Derek,” Laura tells him, throat working as she swallows. Her hair is long and dark, a curtain sweeping over one pale shoulder. Her eyes are the exact same shade as his. “I didn’t mean to.”  
  
“Mom,” he wheezes. “We need to get mom.”  
  
Laura nods, jerkily. She tilts her head back, her neck a long stretch of pale, _human_ skin, and howls.  
  
.  
  
“You put us all at risk,” Derek’s uncle tells him sadly. His face is a ruin, skin cracked and charred from the fire. Blank and dead-eyed. Cas’ absence at his side is a gaping hole in the world, but for once, Derek is thankful. This way, he won’t have to watch her disappear into Dust.  
  
Peter looks at Derek. “You killed us Derek. You and _Laura_.”  
  
He spits her name like a curse and Derek—  
  
Derek sees red.  
  
.  
  
“How are we going to hide this?”   
  
Alan Deaton cocks his head. He peers first at Derek, then at Laura.  
  
He sighs.   
  
“The same way we hide everything else, Talia,” he tells her, patting his baboon daemon when she begins to grumble. “Falsified paperwork and many sleepless nights.”  
  
.  
  
“So, what’s the secret? Why don’t you have a daemon?” Valerian asks the day that Derek meets the him and Erica. “Will the bite make me go away?”  
  
For a moment, Derek considers telling them the truth. Just to see what they’d do.  
  
“No,” he sighs after a moment. “You’ll be fine. Both Isaac and Scott still have their daemons, don’t they?”  
  
Erica stills and looks up, fingers buried in her daemon's fur.   
  
“Then why don’t you still have yours?” she asks softly.   
  
Derek smiles at her and tries to make it go charming around the corners. Laura was always better at getting people to trust them.   
  
He doesn't reply. Thankfully, they drop it.  
  
.  
  
Once the paperwork is settled, Derek’s mom turns to him and Laura with a grimace.  
  
“Now,” she whispers. “This part is going to hurt.”  
  
.  
  
“You know, I went looking through my dad’s files last year,” Stiles tells him. It’s a hot day and the air conditioning in the loft is out. A trail of sweat leads down his temple. They’re no closer to finding Erica and Boyd than they were two weeks ago.  
  
“Yeah?” Derek bites out. “Your point?”  
  
Stiles bites his lip. In his lap, Olesia lets out a pathetic groan and flops onto her back, tongue lolling from her mouth.   
  
“Before 1996,” he says, very carefully. “Laura Hale didn’t exist.”  
  
Derek goes still. “What are you getting at, Stiles?”  
  
Olesia is watching him through dark, narrow eyes. Like this, upside down and sprawled across her human’s lap, she looks ridiculous. Derek forgets sometimes though, how much her and Stiles’ hide their shrewdness behind a mask of humor.  
  
Stiles swallows. “Who was Laura, Derek?”  
  
  
  
.  
  
Kate smiles like a shark and kisses like a butterfly. She’s gorgeous and funny, and she likes Derek.  
  
“I don’t like this,” Laura tells him one night, while he’s examining a dark hickey in their bathroom mirror. She’s sitting on the edge of their bed, her toes tucked under his pillow. It’s probably going to smell like feet when she’s done with it. “I don’t trust her.”  
  
Derek smirks at her in the bathroom mirror. “You’re just jealous.”  
  
Laura bristles all over like the cats she used to favor and doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the night.  
  
Two weeks later, their entire family is dead.  
  
.  
  
“There’s Dust in the woods,” a boy says to another. “I think we should check it out.”  
  
.  
  
It’s easier in New York. Big cities tend to breed smaller daemons, so no one so much as bats an eye at Derek and Laura.  
  
“It’s like we’re invisible,” Laura whispers, her voice soft and playful. Almost giddy.  
  
It is. In this city, Derek and Laura are just ordinary people. A pair of small town siblings trying on the big city like a new pair of shorts. Here, they are invisible. And even if someone might have thought it was weird that they never took their daemons out of their cases, they don’t care enough to look into it. Why would they? They’ve got their own lives to live.  
  
  
.  
  
While they’re in holding, Chris Argent looks at him, and asks, “Was it my sister?”  
  
It takes Derek a moment, and then—  
  
“No,” he hisses. He takes a deep breath, then says again, more calmly, “No. Kate… Kate never touched her.”  
  
Chris nods. They don’t speak again.  
  
.  
  
“Kiss me,” Laura commands, eyes glinting from where she’s reclining against the couch.  
  
Derek pauses in the entryway, boots half off. “Why?”  
  
Laura smiles at him, bounding up and off the couch. He catches her, bemused, and lets her loop her arms around his neck. Her fingers tangle in the short hairs at the base of his skull.   
  
“Because,” she whispers, reeling him in. “I want to try something different.”  
  
.  
  
When Derek is twenty-four, Laura drags them back to Beacon Hills.   
  
“I’m going to go check the preserve,” she tells him, dragging him in for a quick kiss. “You check on Uncle Peter.”  
  
Derek smiles and kisses her again, because he can. She bats at his shoulders until he lets her go, eyes flaring red as his own in the dark of the hotel room.   
  
“Stop that,” she chides, snapping playfully at his finger. “I’ll see you in an hour, okay? We can hit up that diner you used to love.”  
  
“Okay,” he shrugs.  
  
“Love you,” she calls over her shoulder as she bounces out the door, turning briefly to blow him a kiss.  
  
He snorts and rolls his eyes.   
  
“Yeah,” he tells the door. “You too.”  
  
.  
  
Derek doesn’t make it to the hospital.  
  
Halfway there, his world shatters, his eyes go blue, and he loses his soul.  
  
.  
  
On a cold night in Mexico, Derek dies.  
  
It doesn’t take.  
  
He slips into the wolf’s skin as if he’s been doing it his whole life, as easily as Laura once flitted between shapes — hummingbird, lynx, wolf, scorpion — and shakes the dust and dirt from his fur.  
  
When he blinks his new eyes, the world is colored in gold.  
  
 _That’s it_ , Laura says proudly. _See? I’ve always been with you._  
  
The Dust clinging to his fur seems to wink.  
  
.  
  
“She was my sister,” he tells Stiles later, after the church. At Stiles’ look of confusion, he smiles thinly. “Laura. She was my sister. But she was also my daemon.”  
  
His sister. His daemon. His heart and soul.  
  
Laura was everything.  
  
He swallows, ignoring Stiles' look of surprise and the stream of unintelligible garble that follows. Reverently, he strokes the sleepy-eyed house cat draped around his neck.   
  
“No more secrets,” Laura whispers in his ear, voice thick with sleep.   
  
Derek snorts and scratches the base of her ear. He wonders how long it will take her to settle back into her human skin. Somehow, he doubts she’ll make it the full day. He's looking forward to it.  
  
“Well,” she amends, sounding rueful and amused. “Maybe some.”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the mix.

 

 

 

a mix for the boy and the girl, the daemon and the human; for what's right and wrong, beautiful and broken, dead and alive, and everything in between. **  
for the hales and the secrets that they keep.  
**

[[Listen @ 8tracks](http://8tracks.com/callunavulgari/we-were-wolves-once)]

 

**the wonder of life || alexander desplat** _*instrumental*_

 **white flag || the romanovs** _you said we were wolves once upon a time_

 **matches to paper dolls || dessa** _if you're asking, i can't say no just one more chapter, our book won't close_ ****

**do i wanna know || chvrches** _are there some aces up your sleeve? have you no idea that you're in deep? i dreamt about you nearly every night this week how many secrets can you keep?_ ****

**crazy in love || beyonce** _got me hoping you'll save me right now your kiss got me hoping you'll save me right now_

 **take me to church || hozier** _'we were born sick,' you heard them say it._ ****

**lazarus phenomenon || bike for three!** _the boy was an old cat and the girl was a clever mouse. unswimmable waters and flames they could never douse. one minute they were millionaires, the next they'd be the poorest. what he liked about her was that she could see the forest._ ****

**believe || mumford & sons ** _so open up my eyes tell me I'm alive_ ****

**smokey taboo || coco rosie** _somedays you're like an anchor on my heart_ ****

**paint the pictures || of verona** _find me on the moon you'll never be alone here among the stars is home away from home_ ****

**laura || bat for lashes** _you say that you're stuck in a pale blue dream and your tears feel hot on my bedsheets drape your arms around me and softly say can we dance upon the tables again?_ ****

**until it hurts || fransisca hall** _undress these beautiful lies blind me with animal eyes ashes to ashes and dust to dust_ ****

**the crow || dessa** _nobody fears the height, you all just fear the fall go to the edge sometime and prove your body wrong you land badly, but you crash standing_ ****

**born to be wild || j2 feat. blu holliday** _like a true nature's child we were born born to be wild_ ****

**patterns || band of skulls** _and seven for the secrets that are never to be told_ ****

**i will never die || delta rae** _you can bury my body but i’ll never die_ ****

**talking to the moon || bruno mars** _my neighbors think i'm crazy but they don't understand you're all I had you're all I had_ ****

**you'll be in my heart || celtic woman** _why can't they understand the way we feel? they just don't trust what they can't explain i know we're different but deep inside us we're not that different at all_ ****

**nattöppet || detektivbyrån** _*instrumental*_


End file.
